In many situations, it is desirable to produce a rating stream concerning a media presentation. One example of such a presentation is the presidential debates. It is very useful for news organizations and other groups to have an understanding of how the public feels about the different events that occur during a debate.
One way of obtaining such information is to show a presidential debate to a roomful of people. During the presidential debate, the people in the room can be provided with a knob that they adjust to indicate how they feel about the different events that occur during the presidential debate. The collected information thus gives some indication of how the public feels about the debate. The public's approval or disapproval at different points in the debate can be newsworthy.
A downside of this system is that such systems do not tend to provide an accurate representation of the opinion of the public at large, since the people in the room tend not to be a representative sample of the public. The members of the panel tend to be from a single area. Additionally, the sample size tends to be far too small to provide an accurate understanding of the public's approval or disapproval of different events that occur during the presentation.
It is desired to have an improved method of getting a rating information concerning a media presentation that more accurately reflects the opinions of the public.